A Wild Pinterest Appears!

Some of you may have heard of Pinterest, some of you perhaps not, but what is it? Pinterest is yet another social network, one that has had quite explosive growth of late. According to Experian Hitwise Pinterest is now the third largest social network in the US. Despite this Pinterest is currently in invite only beta. Of course exclusivity is a great way of creating buzz, just ask any club owner. I’ve been ‘pinning’ for a few months now and can see its appeal.
First off a basic run down. Pinterest terminology revolves around virtually pinning items to boards. Like one may do at home with inspiration, note or reminder boards.

Pins

The core of Pinterest is its pins. A pin can be an image or a video. You can upload pins directly or add pins from a website, which is the most common way pins are created. When you pin from a websites it is attributed to that website.

Boards

Boards are a way of grouping pins. Users can create and name multiple boards. When you pin a pin you select a board on which it is placed.

Following

When you follow someone their pins appear on your Pinterest (home page). You can either follow all, which means you follow all that user’s boards (and therefore pins) plus any subsequent boards they create, or you can just follow particular boards.

Repin

Repinning is much like retweeting on twitter. You add the repin to one of your boards and your followers see it, then the ripple continues.

They are the basic functions of Pinterest. There are bunch more (e.g. liking and commenting) which you can find out about in their help section.

What Pinterest does really well is design. It’s simple, uncluttered and the focus is on the core of the site, the pins. It utilises the full page width, maximising the use of screen real estate, and incorporates infinite scrolling. All this makes it quite easy to get lost in an endlessly scrolling pit of pretty pictures. It’s great for getting inspired and then sharing your newly found inspiration.

Interestly enough the majority of users are women which is something, in my opinion, you can tell from looking around. What this also means is if you your products are aimed towards women (photography, clothing ect) it makes a lot of sense for you to be on Pinterest. So if you want to see what all the fuss is about head over and request an invite.

PS if you’re confused by the articles title it’s a pokemon meme. A topic I will cover at a later date.